Text Analysis №2
“Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin.
Kate Chopin was born in 1851 and grew up in the household dominated by generations of women that greatly influenced her style of writing. Many of her works deal with women searching for freedom from male domination, and she is considered to be an early feminist writer. Chopin wrote over a hundred short stories, many of which were published in two collections: Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadia. Her two novels, At Fault and The Awakening deal with the controversial themes of divorce and adultery.
The story under analysis is called Story of an Hour and belongs to a psychological type including social element because the author depicts the inner world of the main character, her thoughts about her future life which reflect relations between men and women at the end of the 19th century. The story is close to some extent to Galsworthy’s The Man of Property as it shows the relationship between husband and wife typical of the Victorian society.
The text under consideration has the close plot structure because we observe all the four elements here. In the exposition the reader meets the main characters of the story and learns about the heart disease which one of them has. Then, the events develop in the following way: Mrs. Mallard is told “as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” by her sister Josephine and we see the usual reaction of a wife who lost her husband which is brightly illustrated with the help of the metaphor “when the storm of grief had spent itself” as well as with the help of epithets “a paralyzed inability” and “wild abandonment.” So, the reader may come to the conclusion that her feelings are profound and sincere. After that the widow went away to her room where she started pondering over the situation she appeared to be. Here the reader comes across the contrast between the nervous and